It still seems like Microsoft itself (ironically, I mean, you'd think they'd *want* MMOs to infiltrate the XBox360 market) is the stumbling block to this or Champions ever moving onto consoles, due to their presumably wanting a "piece of the action" on console MMO fees. It doesn't sound like publisher Atari's making any headway on that (or perhaps they are negotiating and can't talk).

I don't see why this should be a big deal. When you go into a retail store and buy a time card, the store gets a piece of that sale, right? Why can't they work out a similar arrangement for time purchased through the console? I wonder how Square managed to do it?

And now there are rumours that even though you get in, they're only doing testing 2 days a week, for a think 2 hours each day, instead of it being a 24/7 affair. I heard that they did this with COH and CO. Is this true?

And there are also some concerns and doubts that Cryptic can handle a franchise with such a big fanbase considering their recent fumble. I'm going to guess that STO is going to be a much bigger MMO for them than CO is.

I won't lie. It's making me nervous and wondering if they'll be able to pull it off. If they do fumble it, it won't be a good day for them to die. Fans will be angry. It's a big gamble.

And now there are rumours that even though you get in, they're only doing testing 2 days a week, for a think 2 hours each day, instead of it being a 24/7 affair. I heard that they did this with COH and CO. Is this true?

That's how it's normally done during the closed portion of beta. That isn't something peculiar to Cryptic.

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And there are also some concerns and doubts that Cryptic can handle a franchise with such a big fanbase considering their recent fumble. I'm going to guess that STO is going to be a much bigger MMO for them than CO is.

What fumble is that, exactly? I thought the CO launch was smooth by MMO standards.

That's how it's normally done during the closed portion of beta. That isn't something peculiar to Cryptic.

Well, now that you mention it, when I was in the AION alpha, I was invited to the closed beta which they did every weekend. But I didn't really have time for it so, I never participated after the alpha was done.

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What fumble is that, exactly? I thought the CO launch was smooth by MMO standards.

I can't quote exactly, since I don't play it, but apparently Cryptic made a big gaffe. Maybe someone here who's in it can explain. All I know is that I saw a lot of concerned people over on the STO forums.

And now there are rumours that even though you get in, they're only doing testing 2 days a week, for a think 2 hours each day, instead of it being a 24/7 affair. I heard that they did this with COH and CO. Is this true?

That's how it's normally done during the closed portion of beta. That isn't something peculiar to Cryptic.

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And there are also some concerns and doubts that Cryptic can handle a franchise with such a big fanbase considering their recent fumble. I'm going to guess that STO is going to be a much bigger MMO for them than CO is.

What fumble is that, exactly? I thought the CO launch was smooth by MMO standards.

Smooth in that the servers were stable and up most of the time, yes. Fumble in that there was a lot of broken content, big content gaps, bugs galore and enormous balance issues due to a series of untested major patches that got shoved out over the first couple of weeks. A lot of this is still going on as the majority of their team was pulled to Star Trek as soon as Champions launched. They recently added in their profanity filter which was so poorly tested and conceived that it was blocking quite a bit of NPC dialogue. Your mission giver tells you "You must put a stop to this", for example, and it would censor 'put a' as it's too similar to 'puta'.

The game feels very much like it was shoved out and then promptly forgotten so that they could devote all of their attention to STO.

That said, they're trying their damnest to make a comeback after how they've been supporting the game after launch. Instead of putting things onto their Test server and ignoring their playerbase that's trying really hard to organize a bug list with exact things that are going wrong (pretty much all the patches that got put onto Test after it launched), they're actually fixing things shown on Test and then putting it onto Live. They also have a roadmap of sorts of what to expect on upcoming months, and it looks quite neat.

Still doesn't solve the fact that there's pretty much absolutely nothing to do once you hit the max level of 40 (and it doesn't take long at all, either). And little replay value (as it requires you to do about 80-90% of the quests available in the game to do so, although they're also putting in new quests to try to counter that).

I have some faith that the devs can pull off STO. I just know that the fanbase will be RAVID if it launches with the same set of problems and misattention that CO had (ignoring bugs and taking their time to fix some absolutely glaring issues).

Finally - only having an uptime of a few days a week for a limited testing span is pretty normal for games that just entered closed beta. Also seeing huge patches, constant player wipes, and really huge bugs (doing X causes the server to crash, doing Y causes everybody in the zone to crash, doing Z causes all players within 100ft to lose their characters) is pretty normal. Hence the term 'closed beta'.

To be frank, the fanbase of CO is a group that wouldn't take that well at all. I'd love to see what their forums say right now.

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They recently added in their profanity filter which was so poorly tested and conceived that it was blocking quite a bit of NPC dialogue. Your mission giver tells you "You must put a stop to this", for example, and it would censor 'put a' as it's too similar to 'puta'.

The game feels very much like it was shoved out and then promptly forgotten so that they could devote all of their attention to STO.

That's really funny! I haven't played recently, but expect to do so shortly. I think most people expect some hitches with MMO content at launch and some rebalancing too. If what you're saying about pulling staff to STO is true, though, that sounds unfortunate. Hopefully that's temporary, since STO is due out fairly quickly. Hard to imagine launching two MMOs in such close proximity, but then you'd hope they knew what they were getting into.

Gotta say . The ground combat in particular looks like uninspired. The characters look stiff and it just looks disappointing overall. This is a section of the game that will need to be heavily improved, if at all, before it ships. I like SWTOR's ground combat a lot more from what I've seen, where it points out objects you can use as cover.

The ship to ship battle also feels boring, and from what I've heard, episodes (missions) will always comprise of both ship to ship battle and ground battle, and be heavily instanced.

I don't think the ship to ship looked boring when I saw it. What it wasn't was arcadish in nature. It played out at a tactical pace. The animations on the ground-based stuff definitely look unfinished. No wonder they haven't wanted to show it. That was over a month ago, though, and they still have more time. I'd consider that alpha code; it doesn't represent what the game will look like by launch.

Quote from: Rumpy on November 03, 2009, 06:44:20 PM

A new video, from a demo at PAX (Penny Arcade Expo). Make sure you watch the HD version.

Gotta say . The ground combat in particular looks like uninspired. The characters look stiff and it just looks disappointing overall. This is a section of the game that will need to be heavily improved, if at all, before it ships. I like SWTOR's ground combat a lot more from what I've seen, where it points out objects you can use as cover.

The ship to ship battle also feels boring, and from what I've heard, episodes (missions) will always comprise of both ship to ship battle and ground battle, and be heavily instanced.

I like SWTOR's ground combat a lot more from what I've seen, where it points out objects you can use as cover.

What's funny is that the SWTOR combat reminded me a LOT of Champions Online combat. One possibility is that STO will adopt the better aspects of CO combat and leave the worst parts of it. I know its an area that they have acknowledged in the past that needs work. I also heard that the PAX demo build is a few months old. Not sure how true that is.

Oh also, those cover points used in SWTOR is for just the Smuggler classes. Your Jedi, Sith, Trooper, Bounty Hunter, etc will not have access to them.

There is one important thing I got out of that interview. Its that they are trying to keep the space combat slow. By being slow it allows for a lot more tactical depth. I'm not saying that it WILL have tactical depth, just that they have more opportunity to do so with slower combat. For example, there isn't any point in using a debuff if combat is over in 5 seconds, but it can make a big difference during a 5 minute battle.

I think that is one of the areas that Cryptic screwed up with Champions. They were so focused on making combat fast that it lost tactical depth in the process. CoX has slower combat and makes much better use of all those awesome status effects like fear, confuse, hold, etc. Those become pointless in CO since the fight is over before it would matter.

So that slow space combat may look boring, but that may be a necessary sacrifice to add some depth. A game of chess looks boring as well, but I greatly prefer the strategy of that game over the very exciting to watch pro boxing fights. Maybe not the best example, but you know I'm getting at.

IF I had tried out something like that, I'd say that ship combat was fun, but very confusing...It came to me in a dream, that there need to be some sort of navigational chart, since right now its all based on what you can see in space..that would be frustrating and difficult I'm sure.

Also, the same dream told me about the away missions, which bore a striking similarity in engine to CO (no surprise there), and seemed promising, but I'm sure it would be unfair to judge the game based on that early dream of mine...

I was thinking. If the Klingons are an unlockable and everyone has to play Federation for a while to unlock them. then wouldn't the Klingon players be at a disadvantage right off the bat because the feds would already have much better ships while the Klingons would all be in their Bird of Noobness?

Hey, who got SWTOR, CoX and Champions in our Star Trek Online? Is this Reese's Peanut Butter Cups or something?

It seems like ground combat is a smaller part of STO than in other MMOs. Given that it's using a modified version of the Champions Online engine, I'm not surprised if the combat looks/feels like CO's. It's not the same dev team though, and it's not necessarily going to have the same strengths/weaknesses as CO. So far from the hands-on pieces I've read, writers seem to like the ship-to-ship combat (which is not an attempt to do X-Wing dogfighting, but apparently captures the fairly deliberate pace you'd expect from starships).

I like that only the Smuggler gets the cover fire mechanism in SWTOR. I'm all for every class getting something unique to it. I thought I would like Champions' "mix and match powers any way you want, we have no classes to speak of" but in the end, I prefer having some delineated classes to work from as my template, and knowing right away what my character's strengths and unique skills are.

And I'd agree that while I thought I would like CO's "fast combat," in the end, it's true, everything happens so fast there really is no time to use group tactics, or strategize much in terms of support powers or what have you. I don't know if I can categorize that as a complaint cause that's clearly what Emmert and Co. were trying to do (fast, fast fast) and they wanted it to appeal to console gamers. But I guess the irony is that due to the (so far) inability to work out a console gaming subscription fee policy with Microsoft, it doesn't seem likely the XBox360 version will see the light of day.

Has anyone on these boards received an invite due to their CO subscription of 6months or lifetime?I haven't yet.I quit the game a couple of months ago and was wondering if they feel now I don't qualify for the promotional come-on??

I'm hopefully paraphrasing accurately -- Cryptic moderators seemed to say that if you subscribed, you'll get into STO closed beta eventually. Basically they did not have anywhere near enough slots to dole out in the first day, or first week etc. of closed beta.

They're not "policing" who is actively playing, and if they decided not to give subscribers their slots as advertised, I would definitely smell "breach of contract" and/or "false advertising" lawsuits en masse. I don't think they're that unwise.

Most folks seem to see it as false advertising in that their impression is they could've gotten into closed STO beta quicker by just signing up at the web site, than by going for either of the Champions subscription packages. I think that's the danger of using beta slots as "marketing carrots," and I wish publishers would stop using them as such -- at the least, they're going to have to start adding some legal disclaimers that they don't guarantee you slots immediately, or even by a certain point in a closed or open beta process.

Anyway, didn't mean to go on and on about it. The topic's beaten to death at official forums, but the threads are scattered all over the place, so I thought these might be helpful to those wondering about it.

I was thinking. If the Klingons are an unlockable and everyone has to play Federation for a while to unlock them. then wouldn't the Klingon players be at a disadvantage right off the bat because the feds would already have much better ships while the Klingons would all be in their Bird of Noobness?

BTW I must be a Gorn! i want a Gorn Dreadnought!

Except that Klingons are for PVP, not PVE. They're not going to experience the mission-type gameplay that's part of the core game.

Yeah, sorry, my fault I just see it as two of the big franchises going head to head. Either way, I just feel like SWTOR looks more polished. Even if the Smuggler's the only one getting those cover points, it still shows that they've been thinking about it. But maybe I've been a little harsh with STO considering that was beta footage.

Slower paced ship-to-ship battles is one thing, but they're doing this in 2.5D, so it kind of seems to me like a waste since it's not a real 3D space. Seems like the use of tactics, which is what they're aiming for, would be quite limited, like shown in that video I posted from PAX with the guy getting stuck in the boundaries. Noob or not, people are going to hit those boundaries.

I heard a pretty apt analogy somewhere. Someone described it as driving a car in GTA. You'd be going forward, steering from side to side, but with no up and down, with it being pretty linear. If that's the way it's going to be, then I see the tactics being quite limited.

If I was someone who had tried the game, I'd say that you can go up and down, but its pretty limited what effect it has right now though. I'd also probably say that facing is a lot more important, since you'll be costomizing your ship with different weapons able to fire at different angles.

Again, someone who was in the closed beta would probably say it still looks like a very early beta of the game...and that there is tons of room for improvement, but also that it has great potential...

If I was someone who had tried the game, I'd say that you can go up and down, but its pretty limited what effect it has right now though. I'd also probably say that facing is a lot more important, since you'll be costomizing your ship with different weapons able to fire at different angles.

Again, someone who was in the closed beta would probably say it still looks like a very early beta of the game...and that there is tons of room for improvement, but also that it has great potential...

Star Fleet Battles was 2D and I don't think it suffered from lack of tactics just because the Z-axis was unavailable. I read somewhere (maybe in the Star Fleet Battles manual) that the 3D aspect wouldn't really add much anyway, since a ship can simply roll to keep the enemy in the upper or lower half of the vertical plane.

For me big starship combat (coming from a SFB point of view) was always about managing your power. You never had enough power to do everything you wanted to do so you had to choose. How fast do I want to go? Well, if I go that fast, I can't charge all my weapons, so which ones do I pick? Which shield do I reinforce? By how much?

I'm definitely not in the closed beta so I can't answer whether power management is a big deal in the game. But maybe someone else could. Hypothetically.

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Well, if someone *was* in the closed beta, they'd probably answer that power management does play a role - you'd probably be able to select different presets "attack, defense, speed" and so on and each preset takes time to get implemented due to shifting of power management. You could probably also make your own settings, and change them on the fly as the situation demands.

Power management is hypothetically a huge thing in the ship combat, it makes a very big difference in power to shields, engines, and phasers...probably ;-)

hypothetically ships can also be outfitted with gear, just like a character in any other MMo, and different duty officers, which levels up, and can be taken with you on away missions, so the costumization possibilities are pretty big due to all these different things you can do...again, speaking hypothetically

That sounds excellent to me. I hope they keep that type of power management and not dumb it down for the masses. I especially like that it takes a finite amount of time to shift things around.

I would like to thank that hypothetical person and if we ever met I would shake his hand

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Yeah, sorry, my fault I just see it as two of the big franchises going head to head. Either way, I just feel like SWTOR looks more polished. Even if the Smuggler's the only one getting those cover points, it still shows that they've been thinking about it. But maybe I've been a little harsh with STO considering that was beta footage.

Its a fair comparison but in a few months when STO comes out you won't be making a decision about which game to play. When STO comes out, SWTOR will still be six months or more away from release. That is plenty of time to play STO till you're tired of it before SWTOR comes out. I'd also guess that SWTOR has at least double the budget of STO.

The number one thing I'd like to know about STO is about non-combat activities. All the released info is about combat. What else is there? The Star Trek TV shows and movies have always only been about 25% combat and the rest being about other stuff like science, exploring, and diplomacy. My biggest issue with Champions is that there is nothing else to do besides beating things up.

The number one thing I'd like to know about STO is about non-combat activities. All the released info is about combat. What else is there? The Star Trek TV shows and movies have always only been about 25% combat and the rest being about other stuff like science, exploring, and diplomacy. My biggest issue with Champions is that there is nothing else to do besides beating things up.

Yeah, me too. Sadly, it seems like they're thinking more about combat than exploration, which leaves me feeling empty. I would think part of the fun of a Star Trek MMO would be exploring, both new and established systems.

I would think part of the fun of a Star Trek MMO would be exploring, both new and established systems.

This is the biggest potential draw. The possibility of true exploration, something that no MMO I know of offers (perhaps there's another sci-fi game?). With procedurally generated content, you can literally encounter planets and species that no one has seen, and share them with friends. The question remains whether or not they can make that content interesting beyond being a novelty.

MOOs are still great fun for a while but ever since they introduced instancing they just haven't been as fun as what they once were. I was bred on open full worlds like UO. Then EQ instanced the dungeons. Then others instanced the whole game like Tabula Rosa. It kinda ruins it for me.

Dunno if anyone pointed this out earlier, but Eurogamer claims that Atari's set Feb. 2, 2010, as STO's North American release, and Feb. 5 as the European release. Is setting a "hard" date at this point a bad idea (meaning if the game is still in bug-fest mode Feb. 2, it's still releasing), or does it give them something to shoot for? It does give the angry "Why aren't I in closed STO beta yet!!!" mobs a vague idea of when the closed beta would end I guess.

I would think part of the fun of a Star Trek MMO would be exploring, both new and established systems.

This is the biggest potential draw. The possibility of true exploration, something that no MMO I know of offers (perhaps there's another sci-fi game?). With procedurally generated content, you can literally encounter planets and species that no one has seen, and share them with friends. The question remains whether or not they can make that content interesting beyond being a novelty.

hypothetically, no such thing is in the game, *yet*... There's actually speculations about quite a few things that arent in the game yet. Whether its in some internal build or not, no-one knows. For instance, while craftable stuff can be found (Crystals and such) no crafting is in the game....this is all hyopthetical though

Dunno if anyone pointed this out earlier, but Eurogamer claims that Atari's set Feb. 2, 2010, as STO's North American release, and Feb. 5 as the European release. Is setting a "hard" date at this point a bad idea (meaning if the game is still in bug-fest mode Feb. 2, it's still releasing), or does it give them something to shoot for? It does give the angry "Why aren't I in closed STO beta yet!!!" mobs a vague idea of when the closed beta would end I guess.

Honestly, the space combat is beautiful, and enjoyable but sadly not as deep as Bridge Commander Starfleet/Klingon Academy, but not as shallow as Star Trek Legacy, and not as a clusterfuck of the Star Fleet Command games.

Kitbashing your starship is quite interesting in getting the 'look and feel' of YOUR starship, but sadly from the 1 ship class I have played with (Miranda type, Reliant Star Trek II) I haven't even gotten a chance to really dig into it or the ranking system.

Right now they are testing out a 'auto group' thing for the first 2 'out in space' noob missions/quests that I didn't experience the first time I got to play and I hate it. Star Trek was always about THE Captain, THE SHIP, and THE CREW, not everyone else's. I want to group when I want to, not be auto grouped into stuff, simular to the Monster Island Crisis and Lemuria Crisis zones in Champions Online.Hopefully they will take it out.

Ground Combat... honestly I haven't done alot of it, but so far it's pretty typical MMO fare. Real Time turned based combat ala EQ/WoW/etc, and it just doesn't fit well with Trek. I'd much rather have Elite Forces 2 type 3rd person real time combat, even if it is nerfed for idiots then the combat system that is in pretty much every other MMO out there.

Near the end tonight a bunch of player (roughly) 30 went to a local 'pocket of baddies' (happened to be Klingons) and just tore through the entire sector. It wasn't as graceful as say the last 2 seasons of DS9, or First Contact's Borg space combat scene but it was alot of fun, and tactics and power settings/officer abilities were useful and enjoyable.

As the game stands now with 2 hours a day, with 2 days a week testing schedule, I just don't see how they could even possibly ship this game in Feb.The space combat part is for the most part done and just needs some UI tweaking, and it's good to go except for content.The ground combat game... honestly I would be very happy with a 90% space game and a 10% ground game except maybe to interact with other players, upgrade your ships etc.

Also forgot to mention something that is really nice is a huge overview map (think Metaverse from Starfleet Command minus the hexus and one giant map) that allows you to go from sector to sector (where the planets/space stations/asteroid belts/etc are), and from that you can see other players ships, where pockets of baddies are (like the klingon baddies we attacked earlier), and is simular to the overview map in say Baulder's Gate where you can rest and see where you need to go and find friends/other players etc.

If I had a nickel for every time I and the masses played an MMO in beta and thought, "I just don't see how they could even possibly ship this game by X date," and then went ahead and shipped it on that date anyway, I'd, uh, have a lot of nickels. I also don't get the impression Atari as publisher believes in the "we'll ship it when it's done" mantra.

Steve: You have a career choice. Our characters are a bit more complex than the average MMOG in that you as a player are playing your own Captain but then you are also responsible for your Bridge Officers as well as your crew on your entire starship. This means that any given moment that you are playing, you are improving all those assets. You have a personal career choice as a Captain, which can be Tactical, Engineer or Science. As you develop your character and acquire bridge officers they will also be either Tactical officer, Engineering officers and Science officers that you are developing.

If I had a nickel for every time I and the masses played an MMO in beta and thought, "I just don't see how they could even possibly ship this game by X date," and then went ahead and shipped it on that date anyway, I'd, uh, have a lot of nickels. I also don't get the impression Atari as publisher believes in the "we'll ship it when it's done" mantra.

The CO release has definitely reinforced my rule about waiting a few months before playing any new MMOG. I figure that I don't have to wait until the developer tells me the game is ready for release. I know not to trust them about it anymore. Instead I'll wait until I think the game is ready for release and then I'll buy it. Just because the game is sitting on the store shelves doesn't mean we should all assume that its ready to play.

On the other hand, I have a friend who tried the beta for one night and was so impressed that he is thinking about a lifetime sub. When I asked about why, he said that it has a very different feel from other MMOG's so it will be a good game to play along side other games.

Oh my GOD I want to play this game RIGHT NOW. Reading this shows that the devs really know what they're trying to get into, and that they're trying not to stuff this game into the core MMO 'thinking'. It also sounds like an entirely different game than CO (and dev team for that matter).